A Note on the Word "Conservative"

Indeed. I count myself as a conservative but would see eye to eye with some leftists more than with some of the groups you name, on some issues anyway. What is heartening at the moment is seeing so many articulate younger people taking up a role, yourself among them. Conservatism used to have an image problem (fusty, unintellectual, and just not very happy) that was not altogether undeserved. Conservative blogs are, apart from anything else, livelier and more interesting than what the left has to offer. The left is now the sclerotic establishment.

Happy also to note how conservatives make sense on the web in particular. Sign of the times. In relation to books the same "confidence" may apply well. Only problems appears to be out on the street squares, work places, and official public media. The unsocial nature of society is taking its toll. Mere Liberal-Left life (secular) is in many ways simply a menace as it stands. Often like a barren stalemate, and not much hopes for the next day.

I don't know. I used to be an ardent socialist in my early twenties. I can still remember why I had that point of view. I just thought life was so short that people shouldn't spend their days worrying about housing, medicine, or other material needs. Or, indeed, working all the hours God gave just to stay alive. Also, I was haunted by the thought of society becoming more and more commercialised, and hence, banalized. I don't think socialism is the answer now, and I think a less dark view of ordinary life and material adversity-- having known plenty of the latter myself. But I still think it's a bad feature of our society that so many people are on a treadmill, and that commercialization seems to be ever-increasing-- to the extent that we now have "Black Friday" in Ireland without Thanksgiving.

Indeed I sometimes worry that any potential contributors who lean this way might be deterred by the very traditionalist conservative flavour of the forum!

We, as conservatives and traditionalists, do ourselves down sometimes. I have seen the phrase quite a lot 'But what have you conserved lately?'. Most people think the answer to that is some sort of physical entity like old buildings, trains, ancients forests or the Irish Language. All these are commendable but are not the full story.

What we really should be trying to conserve more is the values of the moral law, and those values that have almost always been held to be admirable throughout the ages. Discipline, hard work, compassion, truth, loyalty, family, children, outdoor life, crafts and skills, beautiful art and music and God. You could add other things to that. The skill is integrating all these values into a new age of technology, eventually giving rise to the best of both worlds.

Conservatives, generally speaking, probably are more interesting, maybe even more fun than the 'left'. Conservatives value the 3 terms of time, the past, present and future. Most progressives disdain the past and turn their back on it, their eyes are mostly cast in the direction of an unattainable future utopia. So the progressive, or leftist, really only functions on two of the terms of time, the present and the future and is therefore missing out on a vast sea of experience, tradition and heritage, which can only diminish them.